Impossible Adoration
by LadyDiadem
Summary: Ron's done it now. He's gone and fallen in love with a Muggle girl. Brought together by a chance meeting, they break the law as she becomes immersed in his world. But what will happen when her life is threatened, and not even his magic can save her?
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Hello! My first fanfiction, but I hope it goes well. Updates might be far between, but I promise they'll get there eventually. I already have a good half of the story written... just have to connect the pieces. I won't be following the events of the books competely, so don't get confused if something shows up in the wrong order. I'm just picking and choosing the pieces that best fit my plot. The story is set around the time of HBP and DH. Reviews and critiques are welcome and I hope I won't be too horribly busy to update...  
>Enjoy!<em>

The first time Beth saw him, she was Christmas shopping. His brilliant orange hair was what caught her eye, a bright flash of colour amidst all the whites and greys. He was towing a girl who was around the same age as him, and sporting the same flaming hair. She instantly hoped it was his sister. There was something about him, something that made her insides heat up and curl their toes in delight.

He looked safe.

* * *

><p>Ron would have stopped dead in the street if Ginny hadn't been so insistently tugging on his arm. The girl in front of the grocery market was the most beautiful human being he had ever set eyes on, despite the fact that half of her face was hidden by a thick scarf.<p>

The scarf was the only thing that looked warm about her, though. She wore only a thin jacket, open over a cardigan. Her hands were pulled up inside the sleeves of her coat, and the nose peeking out above the scarf was bright red with cold. Ron watched, entranced, as she picked through the fir-branch wreathes on display in front of the shop. Ginny gave an insistent yank on his arm, though, and he followed her reluctantly away.

* * *

><p>The next time she saw him, Beth knew it was fate. She was crouched on the floor at the bottom of a bookshelf in the cramped used book store, her nose buried in a tale of magic and dragons. He burst through the door of the shop with a gang of kids with flaming hair, letting in a gust of frozen December air. She listened to his laughter and watched discreetly as he wrestled with an orange-haired brother, unable to drag her eyes away.<p>

And then he looked at her.

It was like magnets.

Completely involuntarily, she stood and made her way towards him, winding carefully around towering piles of books. He disengaged from his siblings, his mouth hanging open slightly as he stumbled over to meet her.

Righting himself, his face flaming red up to the tips of his ears, he smiled at her.

"Hi," he said, extending his hand. "My name's Ron. Ron Weasley."

"Hi," she breathed. "Elizabeth Ricketts. But you can call me Beth," she smiled, and then placed her hand in his.

His hand was firm and calloused, but warm and strangely soft. Beth's own delicate fingers were engulfed by his, and she was filled with a feeling she had long forgotten.

Ron Weasley was safe, and Elizabeth Ricketts was home.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I'm really really sorry for the slow upload! I love this story, but I always hate starting the plot... I'm super sorry for the crappy writing right now, but I just need to get this part over with... better stuff is to come! Promise :)_

Elizabeth and Ron did not meet again until after Christmas. Beth was sitting alone in the corner of a coffee shop, a long-cold cup of tea abandoned on the table before her. Ron, passing on the street outside, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the unforgettable head of curls that he hadn't been able to chase from his mind.

Beth, buried in a book, didn't notice the argument going on outside the café, but a few of the patrons sitting by the windows watched amusedly as the red-haired boy argued with his two friends.

"No, seriously, Hermione. I want to get a cup of tea."

"In a Muggle shop, Ron? Really?" The dirty-blonde-haired girl looked bemused. "Have you ever been in there before?"

"Yeah, all the time," Ron said distractedly, glancing through the window to confirm Beth's presence. "I'll meet you at the bookshop in a few."

"I might like a cup of tea," the skinny black-haired boy, the short one, peered into the window, barely hiding his attempts to follow Ron's line of sight.

"I'll get you one," Ron said quickly. Harry and Hermione stared at Ron for a moment, almost-identical looks of confusion plastered across their faces. "Seriously," Ron said. "You two go on. I'll catch up in a minute."

"Okay," Hermione said slowly, tugging at Harry's elbow until he followed, glancing back at Ron with narrowed eyes and a calculating expression on his face. Ron waited until they had stopped looking back at him, and then spun to enter the shop, all of his attention now focussed on Beth.

"Excuse me." Beth looked up to see the red-headed boy from the bookshop standing rather abashedly in front of her. Ron. Slipping her finger into her book to mark her place, she smiled up at him.

"Hi," she said.

He smiled.

It was intriguing, the way it transformed his face. Ron's face was weathered, his freckles and constant state of near-tan making Beth think he worked outside often. The smattering of freckles across his nose deepened when he blushed, as he was doing slightly now. The freckles on his cheeks all but disappeared when he smiled. He had slight dimples at the corners of his mouth, and his crooked grin made him look like he harboured a secret.

His eyes, though, were the most entrancing. They had been a smoky shade of blue before his smile, but now they were like the clearest of skies. Beth was suddenly filled with them impression of flying through the air, the rhythmic thump of a ball being tossed echoing in her ears.

"Can I sit down?" Ron asked, and the sounds echoed and then faded in Beth's ears. Blinking and feeling mightily foolish, she nodded.

"Yeah, sorry," she flustered, but Ron only grinned as he slid into the seat across from her, slipping her book from her fingers almost teasingly. Beth was about to protest, but he carefully marked her place with one long finger and she smiled.

* * *

><p>Harry and Hermione were debating whether they should call the police or the loony bin to report their missing freckle-faced friend when he came bursting through the door in the usual Weasley fashion, breathless and flushed.<p>

"Where the bloody hell were you?" Harry demanded playfully, bashing him on the shoulder with a book.

"Nowhere. Just… ran into a friend," Ron said.

"Who?" Harry asked, amused. "You're… glowing."

"I am not!" Ron protested angrily, blushing to the roots of his hair.

"Really?" Harry said, trying to smother his laughter.

"Really," Ron said firmly, giving him half a glare. "It was no one. Just ran into her."

"Her?" Harry grinned, and Hermione finally pulled her head from her book.

"Her?" she repeated curiously. "Who?"

"No one," Ron said, his teeth gritted. "It was no one."

"So… where's my tea, then?" Harry asked.

Ron opened his mouth to spit some retort at him, and then froze. He had completely forgotten about the tea.

Harry and Hermione were still smirking when they left the bookshop.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thank you to my wonderful reviewers! You inspired this chapter :)_

Harry and Hermione kept up their furtive glances and smirking for the entirety of the long walk from Ottery St. Catchpole back to the Burrow. Ron, unable to fume because of the insistent balloon of happiness expanding inside his chest, merely shook his head and allowed them to walk a little behind him, giggling and whispering like a pair of first years.

Mrs. Weasley was waiting for them when they got back, just as the sun was about to set. She waved to them from the front step when Ron pushed through the gate, and he turned to send a stern look that he didn't really mean to his two best friends.

"Not a word to any of them, yeah?" he said quietly, his eyes a mixture of threatening and pleading.

"Not even Ginny?" Hermione asked, half-teasing.

"Especially not Ginny. God, if she found out she'd tell the twins and then I'd never hear the end of it!"

"Alright, Ron," Hermione laughed. Harry was grinning so hard it looked like his face was going to split in two.

"Hello, dears," Mrs. Weasley said when they reached her, giving them each an affectionate hug. "Ron, would you mind shutting the chickens in before dinner? It's getting rather dark."

Ron, momentarily stunned by his mother's surprisingly good mood, simply nodded and went to do his chores, leaving Harry and Hermione alone with his family.

* * *

><p>It happened in the middle of dinner, just as Ron had taken an enormously large bite of mashed potatoes. Fred was the one who did it, his mischievous grin flashing across the table before he played his jab.<p>

"So, Ron," he started, waiting until his brother had looked up from his plate. "Did you see your village lover today?"

Ron nearly spit his mouthful of spuds across the table. Choking and flaming red, he managed to swallow and get down a gulp of milk before coming up sputtering. Harry and Hermione looked just as baffled as he felt, though, so he knew they had kept their tongues.

Giving a last little cough, he glared at Fred. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, bullocks," Charlie laughed. "You're redder than a Chinese Fireball. What's her name, then?"

"I do not have a-"

"Ron!" Mrs. Weasley had come striding over from the stove, where she had been refilling the gravy boat. "Is that what you were doing in the village all day? And where did you leave your poor friends while you were gallivanting around with this girl?"

"The bookshop," Hermione said in an undertone. Fred and George burst into raucous peals of laughter.

Mrs. Weasley rounded on Ron.

"Ronald Billius-"

"Mum, calm down! I don't have a lover!" Ron could feel his face go from broiling to burning.

"Well then why did you leave your friends alone in the bookshop? Hmm?"

"I just ran into her. I met her before Christmas, and I just thought I'd say hello. She's not… I don't really even know her. We were just talking."

"But she's a Muggle?"

"Yeah, mum. She's a Muggle. Why does that have to make a difference?"

"Oh, you're talking about the girl from the bookshop, aren't you?" Ginny asked, speaking up suddenly. Everyone rounded on her. "What what her name… Beth! Was it Beth?" Ginny asked, beaming at Ron. He was suddenly immensely grateful to his sister.

"Yeah, it was Beth," he admitted.

"I liked her," Ginny said, grinning.

And that was the end of that.

* * *

><p>Three days later, Ron was packing. He was always slightly sad about leaving the Burrow, but this time a sense of melancholy had settled in that he just couldn't shake. Loath as he was to admit it, he knew it was Beth. He had to see her again before going back to Hogwarts for the spring term. Even though he had only seen the beautiful Muggle girl twice, there was just something about her that made him want to see her every moment of every day. He thought about her when he drank tea, every time he saw a book or a fir branch. He dreamt about her, found himself staring out the window morosely thinking about her. He lost hours of his time to her.<p>

He was obsessed, and he knew it. He just couldn't stop it.

Finally, the evening before they were due to return to Hogwarts, Mrs. Weasley found him sitting in the windowseat in the sitting room, a book abandoned in his lap, staring forlornly at the dark world outside.

"Are you still on about that girl?" she asked gently, sitting down across from him with an affectionate pat to the shins.

Ron suddenly found himself at a loss for words, and merely nodded at his mother.

"Well, perhaps she could write to you at Hogwarts, then," she suggested softly.

"Mum, she's a Muggle. She's not going to be very impressed when an owl comes tapping on her window. How am I going to explain that to her?"

"Maybe you won't have to."

"Mum… Muggles don't have pet owls that carry post for them."

"Yeah… but you do."

Five minutes later, Ron had grabbed his broom and was laid almost flat along it, racing towards the little village. He pulled himself up short just before he could see the individual crosses on the windows of the houses, and found a bush to stash his broom in. Praying he would remember how to find it in the dark, he set off down the street.

The owner of the coffee shop was just closing up for the night when Ron ran up to her, breathless.

"Wait!" he called, and the friendly-looked middle-aged woman opened the door again.

"I'm sorry, dear, but I'm all out of tea. You'll have to come back tomorrow."

"No, wait. I'm just," he had to pause and gulp a mouthful of air. "I'm looking for someone. There's this girl. She… she comes here sometimes, sits in the corner and drinks tea."

"Hon, lots of people come to sit here and drink tea. You're going to have to give me more than that. I know a lot of people." The woman was smiling kindly at him.

"Her name's Beth. She's got curly brown hair-"

"Oh, yeah I know Beth!" The woman grinned at him. "She's a lovely girl."

Relief hit Ron like a wave. He could feel his stress-tightened limbs loosening. "Do you know where I could find her?" he asked the greying shopkeeper.

"She lives out on Kings Avenue, but I doubt you'll find her there!" The woman had to shout the last bit at Ron's retreating back. He tossed a 'thank you!' over his shoulder, and sprinted off down the lamp-lit street.

Even if he didn't find Beth at her house, he'd hopefully be able to find someone else who knew where to find her. With that knowledge in mind, Ron boldly climbed the steps to the first house on Kings Avenue, trying to slow his rapid breathing as he rang the bell.

Nobody answered.

Trying not to feel the stone of discouragement growing in the pit of his stomach, Ron climbed down the steps and ran across the lawn to the neighbouring house. Crossing his fingers, he rang the bell again.

A curse, and then a bellowed shout came from within the dark house. A light clicked on somewhere within, and Ron waited with bated breath for the stranger who wasn't Beth to open the door.

Ron had the impression of a bleary red-eyed man with stubble across his face and a bottle in his hand before he was assaulted with a barrage of spit-flying insults.

"Who the bloody hell do you think you are, ringing my bell at this hour? Huh? Answer me, boy, or I swear by God there's gonna be pay to shit!"

"I – I just – I'm sorry, sir-"

"Getchur ass off my doorstop before I-"

"Ron?"

Her voice. Behind him. Spinning, completely ignoring the bellowing man at his back, Ron's eyes found her.

She wore some kind of red smock, with the words _Cooper's Grocery Mart_ embroidered on the front. Her curls were tied up on the top of her head, but falling out in adorable little messy waves, and she looked utterly exhausted. And freezing cold. Her hands were buried deep in the pockets of the coat that must have a broken zipper – for why else would she leave it undone on a night like this?

"Beth?" The bellowing voice behind Ron had suddenly become dangerous. "You know this boy?"

"I…" Beth started, but it came out as more of a broken syllable than a word.

"Hi," Ron said, turning to face the man whom he assumed was Beth's father. He stuck out his hand bravely. "I'm Ron Weasley."

The man stared at him, his bloodshot eyes narrowed with distaste. "You get your punk ass off my doorstep. And take that slut with you!"

The door slammed behind him, and Ron stared at it, speechless.

"Well that's just great." Beth's voice was sarcastic, but Ron could hear the hurt underneath it.

"Beth, I – I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to…" Ron trailed off, stumbling down the steps to touch her shoulders.

She was shaking her head, avoiding his eyes. "It's fine, Ron. Just go home. I just have to wait a while until he calms down. Or drinks himself into a stupor… Why am I even telling you this?" She looked up at him, now, her eyes narrowed but helpless and watery despite her attempted anger. She just looked so… tired.

"Beth, let me take you somewhere. We can get a cup of tea. You could stay at my place for the night," Ron said, not even thinking about what would happen if she got anywhere near his house.

"Ron, don't. You don't have to do anything. I'm fine, really. He kicks me out all the time."

"Beth…"

"Really. Just go home, Ron. My neighbour will let me stay at her house until he falls asleep."

"Let me come with you?" Ron asked, unable to let her leave him just yet. "I want to make it up to you."

Beth watched him for a moment, and then seemed to come to a decision because she slipped her small cold hand into his. "Come on," she said.


	4. Chapter 4

Beth rang the bell of the house that Ron had previously thought was empty, her other hand still wrapped in Ron's. The fingers were slowly starting to warm up, but Ron was afraid that if he rubbed them she'd pull her hand away. They waited in the cold for more than the normal amount of time, and Ron started to pull away.

"I tried earlier, when I was looking for your house. I don't think she's home, Beth."

"She's home." Beth's face was set stubbornly so he waited, holding her hand in his, unable to quash the grin that was growing inside him.

Finally, a light clicked on inside the house, and the door was opened. A small, white-haired lady smiled gently up at them, her eyes immediately seeking out their clasped hands. Beth pulled hers away, and Ron felt the embarrassment coming from her in waves.

"Now, Beth, dearie. Who's this young man?" The lady smiled up at Ron, and he suddenly felt immense gratitude to this woman. She obviously cared for Beth, something that her own father failed to do.

"Hi," Ron said, beaming at the woman. "I'm Ron."

"Well come on in, Ron. Beth, dear, you look like you're about to freeze to death. Now you go curl up on the couch with your man and I'll go make you a cup of tea." The woman bustled of into the kitchen, moving surprisingly fast for someone who had taken ages to answer her door. Beth looked apologetically up at Ron while he shut the door behind them.

"Sorry about that," she said bashfully. "She's always telling me that I need to find a man that can take me away from that horror of a stepfather." Her voice was quiet, almost ashamed of the man whom she couldn't control.

"He's your stepfather?" Ron asked, pulling off his shoes with his feet and shucking out of his coat. Beth took it from him and set it on a chair with her own.

"Yeah," she said, but her face said that she didn't want to talk about it anymore so Ron fell silent, following her into a quaint living room that was bursting with needlework. Beth deposited herself into the corner of the couch and Ron, knowing that he shouldn't take the kind old lady's words literally, sat down in the corner across from her, careful to keep his distance. He looked at Beth but she refused to meet his eyes, instead staring at the crocheted pillow she held in her lap. Ron let her sit, taking the time to look around the room instead.

The lady had a small house, and the living room seemed cramped, but cosily so. The couch was sturdy, but there was a chair set across from it that reminded Ron of the word "chintz", even though he didn't quite know what it meant. It was all delicate carvings and hard pink cushion. There were very little pictures on the walls, but Ron spied a shot of Beth framed and set in the place of honour atop the mantle. She was sprawled in a field of daisies, laughing so hard that her eyes were squeezed shut. She looked younger, and Ron was struck with the thought that she was not that girl anymore.

"Here you are, dears," Beth's neighbour said, coming into the room bearing a tray of tea and cookies. She set them on the coffee table in front of the couch, and then settled herself into an overstuffed rocking chair, watching Ron and Beth closely.

Beth reached for the teapot and immediately poured herself a steaming mug of tea, retreating back onto the sofa silently. It was like she had resolved not to talk for the rest of the night. Ron was starting to feel awkward and sat forward slowly to pour himself a cup.

"Now, how did you two meet?" the neighbour asked. Ron heard Beth sigh.

"Melinda, we're just friends. But we met at the used bookstore."

"Oh, another reader, are you?" The neighbour, who was apparently named Melinda, asked Ron. "Sometimes we can hardly pull Beth away from those books of hers."

"Oh, no. I'm not that much of a reader. My best friend loves books, though. She reads all her school textbooks before term starts and everything."

"You're best friends with a girl?" Melinda looked suspicious. Ron supposed it was rather odd at their age, but he had never thought of Hermione as anything more than the slightly exasperating yet entirely loyal best friend that she was.

"Well, yeah. We've known each other since we were eleven. There's three of us actually."

"Another girl?"

"No, a boy. Harry. And Hermione." Ron felt like he was being questioned by the Wizengamot. Melinda didn't even blink at the mention of the famous Harry Potter, though, and Ron felt a guilty flash of pleasure.

"That's nice, dear. Do you three live in Ottery St. Catchpole, then?"

"No, I live out in the country and Harry and Hermione are just visiting. We go to school… uh, abroad."

"I see, I see," Melinda said, pouring herself a cup of tea and handing Ron a cookie. "That's lovely. They sound like good friends."

"They are," Ron said lightly. Melinda was obviously just making conversation to cover up the fact that Beth hadn't moved from her curled-up position in the corner. Ron and Melinda had been glancing furtively at her throughout their conversation, but she hadn't seemed to notice.

"Beth and I go way back, don't we dearie?" Melinda asked genially, and Beth jumped, nearly sloshing tea down the front of her smock.

"What? Yeah. Ah, sorry," she sighed, looking dejectedly down at her damp smock. "I'm just dead tired."

"Long day?" Melinda asked gently, standing up to fetch a brightly-coloured afghan from a basket by the fireplace. She tossed it lightly over Beth, who immediately pulled it around herself. "Ron, dear, would you stoke the fire for me? Beth still looks a little cold."

Ron crouched obediently in front of the embers of the fire, and then froze a moment, faced with a problem. He'd never stoked a fire before. At home, the fire could be lit from across the room with a jab from an of-age wizard's wand, and the fires at Hogwarts were always taken care of by the house-elves. He had no idea how to stoke a Muggle fire. The couch and the chairs were all facing the fire, with the coffee table between, so there was no way for Ron to draw his wand without Beth and Melinda seeing. He didn't fancy the idea of an Improper Use of Magic charge, either. Grabbing the fire-poker, Ron opened the little door in front of the fire and poked cautiously at the coals for a moment with the metal rod.

"Throw another log on there too, will you dear?" Melinda asked, and Ron filled with relief as the fire crackled to life in response to the newly added fuel. Replacing the poker and settling back down on the couch, he allowed himself a small satisfied grin. A weight had lifted off his chest and it took him a moment to recognize it as relief. Where he had previously thought it was entirely impossible for him to even become friends with this small Muggle girl, he was now starting to realize that he could do this. He could be around Beth without the constant fear that she would figure him out for what he was.

The heat from the fire was coming off in wonderful waves of warmth, and Ron felt rather than saw Beth drawing closer to him on the couch. He was seated on the edge closest to the fire, and courtesy told him that he should have offered his place to Beth. But that wouldn't give him an excuse to let her sit close to him, now, would it? Courtesy could be ignored just this once.

* * *

><p>It took them three cups of tea and another two logs thrown on the fire, but Ron and the surprisingly animated Melinda finally managed to thaw out Beth's exhausted silence. The bowl of soup that Melinda had produced after only a few minutes in the kitchen seemed to have helped, too. Ron had been baffled when she had returned from the buzzing kitchen with a steaming bowl of soup (when he knew for a fact that there had not been anything remotely resembling a soup pot on the stove before she went in there), but Beth had looked so happy to see it that he had been distracted from his curiosity in the Muggle world. He was visited with the fleeting thought that Melinda was a witch, or at least a squib, but she was just so entirely <em>Muggle<em> that he knew she couldn't be. Beth had gulped down the steaming chicken noodle and Ron had put it down to what his father so endearingly called 'eckeltricity'.

Now Beth and Melinda were laughing over some story involving an Easter egg hunt Melinda had orchestrated years ago, and Ron was finding himself distracted, again and again, by Beth's laugh.

"-and then-" Beth was having trouble getting the words out around her laughter "-do you remember, Mellie? He was so mad…" she trailed off as her thoughts went back to the abusive stepfather waiting for her in the house next door. You could see the palpable change in her face as she remembered. Melinda must have noticed it too, as she gave Beth's knee an affectionate pat as she reached to set her teacup down on the coffee table. Beth smiled half-heartedly at her, and then turned her attention to Ron.

"It's got to be near midnight, Ron," she said quietly. "You don't have to stay if you need to get home." Ron's heart immediately shuddered to think of leaving this warm room full of laughter and Beth's glowing presence.

"It's fine, Beth," Ron said quickly, and felt a thrill of happiness at saying her name. "I don't have anywhere to be." This was, of course, a lie. Ron had to be up early to catch the train back to Hogwarts tomorrow, and it would be a long time before he would get to sleep the next night; the feast usually kept them up late and it would be a long time before the boys in his dormitory stopped their enthusiastic end-of-holiday banter. In previous years, Ron had been excited for the return to Hogwarts. Now, however, nothing seemed as important as staying with Beth, and making sure she would be all right.

"Actually, I should probably head back, too," Beth said reluctantly, peering through the small steamy window at the silent dark house next door. "He's got to be asleep by now." Her voice now was entirely different than when she had been laughing with Melinda. The change was so much that she sounded almost like a different person.

"You know you're welcome to stay here, dear," Melinda said casually. Obviously this was a bit of a touchy subject between the two of them, as she glanced warily at Beth as she said it, completely contradicting her tone of voice. Ron thought it was probably because of Beth's aversion to asking for help.

Instead of getting upset, though, Beth merely looked tired. "It's fine," she said, smiling self-deprecatingly. "He won't remember it tomorrow, so it's better if I'm there in the morning so he has no reasons to ask questions." Her logic made sense, of course, but Ron hated that she had to say it at all. Here he was, getting upset when his mother was overbearing and his brothers teased him too much, and Beth had to deal with verbal and probably physical abuse from a man who wasn't actually her father. He wondered about her mother – where was she when her husband was yelling at her little girl? How could she not be protecting the fragile Beth from that man with her life? Ron watched as Beth stood, carefully folding the afghan to replace it by the fire. She was so thin, he realized, almost abnormally so.

White hot anger suddenly flared within Ron's chest, filling him with the desire to take Beth away to Hogwarts with him, or at least to some place where her stepfather couldn't find her. He would hide her somewhere, and then return to deal with that disgusting excuse for a man and –

"Are you coming, Ron?" Beth asked quietly, and he suddenly realized that she was standing across the room, almost into the hall. Shaking his head to clear it, Ron let the anger bubble in the pit of his stomach as he stood to join her.

"Thank you," he said to Melinda, trying to put more than casual sincerity into his words. He wanted to thank this woman for looking after Beth. He would always associate gratitude with her, for who knew where Beth would be without her. She was the rock that wasn't hard at all; Beth's protector and friend.

She seemed to understand some of what he was trying to convey, for her eyes sparkled a little more than usual as she squeezed his hand. "See she gets home all right," was all she said, though, giving Ron a sly smile. He answered with a grin, and then followed Beth down the hall past the sparkling kitchen and into the entryway.

"Thanks for the tea, Melinda!" Beth called as she slid her feet into her boots, and Ron knew that her thanks – like his – held more than gratitude for a cup of tea. Melinda's rely was shattered by her chuckling laughter, and she waved merrily to them as she made her way into the kitchen with the tray covered in empty dishes. Ron slipped his jacket on, and helped Beth with hers, and then they made their way out the door and into the frigid air.

Beth was silent as they made their way down Melinda's walk and across the frozen grass. Ron could feel dread rising in his throat at the thought of leaving her. It was like he had left all his warm fuzzy thoughts behind in the cozy crocheted world of Melinda's sitting room. The time he had spent with Beth was all too short for him to be returning to Hogwarts for another term. He wouldn't see her now until the summer. The thought of leaving her behind was somehow infinitely harder to bear than the thought of leaving his mother, and Ron felt slightly guilty for this.

Beth stopped short on her front porch and turned slowly to face Ron. He was surprised to see that she looked almost nervous.

"Thanks," she said, "for coming with me."

Ron shook his head. "It was my fault in the first place. I'm sorry about that, by the way… I didn't mean to-"

Beth cut him off before he could finish, shaking her head. "He's like that with everyone. You should see how he talks to Melinda… He absolutely hates the fact that she's nice to me." She glanced dejectedly at the door behind her.

"Why?" Ron asked tentatively, but Beth's face had closed down already. "Sorry," he said quickly. "I don't mean to pry."

"No, it's fine," said Beth, and her face took on an inquisitive look. "I trust you," she said, and it was like she was surprising herself with the fact. Ron couldn't help but grin. Beth blushed, and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. "Anyway…" she said. "I should probably go in. Gotta get up early tomorrow for work." She grinned sheepishly at Ron. "Maybe I'll see you around town soon, though…?" She left it open, as a question, and Ron ached to give her the answer she wanted.

"Actually," he said slowly, "I'm heading back to school tomorrow morning. That's kind of why I… yeah." Beth was still grinning at him, though, but he thought it had more to do with the fact that he was now blushing up to the roots of his hair than the fact that he wasn't going to see her for five months. "I don't get back until the end of June."

Beth's face fell at that. "Well… do you have an email address? I don't have a cell, but we could email." She seemed uncertain, almost as though Ron wouldn't want to keep in touch with her.

Ron, of course, had no idea what she was talking about. "Um," he said, stalling, but that just seemed to make Beth's face fall even more. "We could write," he said, and she perked up immediately.

"Great. Do you have a pen?" she asked. "I'll need your email address, and then I can write you and you'll have mine."

"Uhh…" Ron said. There was that word again: email. He would have to ask Hermione what it meant, but he would wait until she wouldn't suspect it came from Beth. "I kind of have… a different way of sending post," he said slowly. "You see, I actually… uh, it's really kind of weird. Um…" he stuttered, looking away. His face was flaming, and he was amazed at how hard this was to get out.

Beth's cold hand closed around his, and he looked round at her quickly to see that she was laughing silently. "What?" she asked. "What could possibly be that weird?"

"Well…" Ron said. _Just tell her. Just take a deep breath and tell her. What's the worst that could happen? No, wait. Don't think of that… _"I have an owl," he blurted, "named Pig. Well, actually his name's Pigwidgeon, my sister named him, but I call him Pig, and-" he took a deep breath. _Shut_ up_, Ron! _"He carries my post. When I write letters, I mean."

"Like a carrier pigeon?" Beth asked curiously. Ron was amazed to see that she didn't look remotely surprised that he was telling her that his owl named Pig would bring her letters.

"Well, kinda," Ron said, suddenly unable to stop the grin flooding across his face. "You tie them to his leg. The letters, I mean. My school's kind of remote, and we don't have, um-" He had forgotten the word. Hermione had told him about it; what was the _word_…?

"Internet?" Beth asked, and she looked completely shocked that he didn't have it.

Relief flooded through Ron. "Yeah," he said, grinning sheepishly at her. "We don't have internet, so we have to write letters and send them. The owls are just kind of… well, um, they're faster than post?" he said, hoping Beth would believe him and not question that logic.

"Oh, yes," was all she said, to Ron's utter relief, but he could tell that she didn't quite buy it. She knew that there was something off about Ron, about his school abroad that didn't even have internet and his post owl, but she didn't say a thing. She just smiled at him.

"So… will you write to me?" he asked.

Beth laughed. "Of course," she said, and she squeezed his hand. Ron had almost forgotten that she was holding it, but she let it go and he immediately wished that she hadn't.

"Okay," he said, feeling relieved and suddenly awkward at once. Beth smiled shyly at him.

"Yeah," she muttered, almost to herself.

Ron looked up at her great dark house, and he was suddenly reminded of his anger at the man inside of it. "Beth," he said urgently, taking her hand back. "You'll tell me if it gets too bad, won't you? And…" he wanted to say that she should write to him straight away and he'd come rescue her like some knight in shining armour, but he couldn't see how that could be possible. She didn't have an owl, and Pig would be with him most of time. She would have to wait for Ron to write to her before she could reply.

"You'll get help, won't you?" he asked her earnestly instead.

She gave him an exasperated smile that he didn't quite buy. "I'll be fine, Ron," she said, and she gave his hand another squeeze. "I have Melinda. She looks after me well enough. And, believe it or not, I have been living with him for quite some time, and we've all survived well enough." It was hard for Ron to imagine Beth's world without him, just like it was getting harder and harder for him to remember his life without her.

"But you'll go to Melinda if…"

"I always do," she said with finality, and he could tell that she was done with his nagging.

"Good," he said, and he released her hand, loathe as he was to do so. "I guess… I guess I'll be seeing you, then."

"Yeah," she said, and she gave him one last smile.

Ron turned to go, but Beth stopped him with a hand at his elbow. He made to turn, and before he completely realized what was happening, Beth had stood on her tiptoes and pecked a kiss to his cheek.

"See you in the summer," she said, blushing, and then she turned and opened the door to her dark house, and she was gone. Ron stood for a moment on her doorstep, staring at the door, unable to quite comprehend what had just happened. He touched his fingers to the spark that her kiss had left on his cheek, and then made himself turn and walk down her front steps. It was going to be a very long semester.

Exhaustion was starting to prick at Ron's eyes by the time he made it back to his broom, and so it took him a moment to find it. That, and the fact that he was still reliving every moment with Beth in his mind. He dug it out from below the bushes, though, hating how cold the wind would make his already-frozen body. He told himself that that was the reason his ride back to the Burrow was exponentially slower than his trip into the village, but really he was dreading his return to the magical world for the first time in his life. He had lived with magic since the day he was born; in fact, his birth had even been aided by a healer from St. Mungo's. He had always been content in his world, but for the first time he found something wrong with it: Beth wasn't in it.

And she never would be.

He would be up in front of the Wizengamot, probably, if he willingly introduced a Muggle to the magical world. If not, he would at least face a heavy fine, and that was something his family would never be able to afford. And there was no way that the Ministry would ever allow Beth to stay in his world. Even if he introduced her to his real life, braving the Wizengamot and the fine, they would just erase her memory and it would all be for nothing.

Needless to say, Ron was thoroughly depressed by the time he made it back to the Burrow. The kitchen light was on, and he seriously considered flying his broom straight into his room to avoid his mother. Her damn clock would tell her he was home, though, and she was probably staring at it waiting for him. With an exasperated sigh, he stored his broom in the shed and trudged into the warmth of his kitchen.

Just as he had suspected, his mother sat in her chair in the living room, her knitting in her hands and her eyes on her magical clock. She looked expectantly up at Ron as he shut the door behind him, but he distracted himself with his shoes and coat. When he turned around again, Mrs. Weasley was sitting at the table with a pot of tea in front of her, a steaming mug clasped between her hands.

"You were out for quite some time," she said gently, and Ron was immediately immensely grateful for his mother again, fiery temper and all.

"Yeah," he said, sliding into the chair opposite her. She started to offer him tea, but Ron shook his head. He had had quite enough tea for one night.

"How did it go?" she asked, again very gently.

Ron shrugged. "It was fine," he said. He simply could not shake the sense of dread that weighed on his tongue and pulled his heart down to his stomach.

"Did she agree to write you?"

Ron grunted in reply, glaring at his clasped hands on the tabletop.

"Ron… what happened, sweetheart?"

"She's Muggle, mom," he said suddenly, looking up at her sharply.

"Yes. So?" Mrs. Weasley was watching him closely, and Ron was uncomfortable. He was tired, he was uncomfortable, he was cold, and (fine, he'd admit it) he was depressed.

"So she'll never be able to be a part of our world, mum," he said, letting all of his frustration at the Ministry pour into his words. His whole body was exhausted. He felt like he had run a marathon and that he would like nothing better than to lay his head down on the table and sleep for ages.

"She doesn't have to know about magic to be your friend, Ron," his mom said carefully, but Ron was shaking his head before she was done.

"What are we going to talk about if I can't tell her anything about magic?" he asked dejectedly. "My entire life has magic in it. Everything I do at Hogwarts is about magic. All of my classes, quidditch, Hogsmeade, Harry – mum, I can't even explain who Harry is without telling her about You-Know-Who."

"You can tell her that he's your friend."

"Yeah and that's going to be a really long conversation," Ron said sarcastically. He was being cruel; he knew his mother was only trying to help, but he just couldn't help himself. "We're going to run out of things to talk about, and she's going to get mad that I won't tell her anything, and that'll be it."

"So… what do you want to do?"

Ron sighed, and looked up at his mother. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "I guess I'll just try writing to her. I'll have to be really careful, though. I mean, she's already suspicious about Pig."

Mrs. Weasley smiled kindly at him. "If she really cares about you she won't push you," she said.

"Hmm," was all Ron said, thinking of the way he had asked about Beth's stepfather and what she must have thought about that. He groaned, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. "It would be so much easier if I could just_ tell_ her."

"Ron, you can't," his mom said, suddenly very serious. "The Ministry-"

"I _know_," Ron said darkly. "It's just… hard."

"Well, there's always other girls…" Mrs. Weasley started gently, but Ron had fixed her with a dark glare. She shrugged and he let his face relax, sighing again. Here he was, pushing one in the morning, a sixteen-year-old wizard discussing the bitter state of his love life with his mother at the kitchen table.

"She's different, though," he said quietly. Mrs. Weasley patted his hand.

"Well, maybe things will work out for you, then," she said, and gave him a grim smile.

"Maybe," he echoed, and then stood, yawning. Mrs. Weasley gave him a quick tight hug, and then they headed up the stairs, Mrs. Weasley turning off to head to her bedroom and Ron continuing up the rickety flights to his.

Trying to be silent, Ron opened the door slowly and started to tiptoe across his room to his bed. A sudden brilliant light startled him, and he whipped around to see a very tired and disgruntled Harry squinting blearily at him.

"Where've you been?" he mumbled, fumbling for his glasses on the floor beside his cot.

"Nowhere," Ron said darkly. "Don't get up."

"No, Ron, come on," Harry said, stifling a yawn and sitting up. "Were you in the village? Your mum wouldn't tell us anything. Hermione and her almost had a row."

"What?"

"Yeah, she got really mad."

Ron sighed. "I went to see Beth," he finally admitted, pulling back his sheets and crawling into the cold space between his blankets and bed.

He had expected Harry to poke fun at him, but his best friend just gazed seriously back at him in the wandlight. "You really like her, don't you?" he asked.

Ron almost didn't know how to answer that. Girls and feelings was definitely not one of the subjects he and Harry touched on often. In fact, they hardly spoke about these things at all. It was Hermione that he went to if he needed to rant about something (or someone), and Ginny that he embarrassedly went to on the rare occasion that Hermione couldn't give him what he wanted.

So now he was at a loss for how to handle this one. He ended up merely grunting a reply at Harry, and then burying his head in his pillows. Harry muttered _'nox'_ at his wand, and the room was plunged once more into darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: You thought I'd forgotten about Ron and Beth, didn't you? No, simply the distractions of my first year of uni getting in the way. But they're still here, I'm still here, and if you're still here, this is for you. More to follow (I hope)!_

Beth awoke to the soft hush that came with newly-fallen snow. Her small bedroom was flooded with impossibly white early-morning light and she had to squint to make her bleary eyes focus on the red numbers of her alarm clock.

7:15.

Her alarm hadn't gone off! Throwing back her covers frantically, now fully awake, she hurried into the small bathroom across the hall and started the shower. Within minutes, the tiny room had filled with steam and she was stepping into the bliss of water almost hot enough to scald. Ryan the stepfather was too cheap to turn the heat up in the winter, and so Beth spent her nights from October to April buried under layers of knitted afghans from Melinda that never seemed to be able to totally chase away the winter chills.

She rushed through the rest of her morning routine, hastily braiding her curly hair and slipping into worn jeans and her favourite hoodie, stuffing her only slightly dirty Coopers smock into her backpack beside her textbooks, and grabbing an apple from the counter before tiptoeing past the snoring man on the couch and dashing out the door. She barrelled down the front steps, intent on making it to school on time at least once this semester. Thank God Ryan had been asleep this morning; it took her forever to leave if he was up and feeling mean. She had become such an expert at sneaking around her own house…

So focussed was she on her pitiful home life, Beth failed to acknowledge the glaring ice that covered her front walk. The moment she ran off the steps, her feet flew out from underneath her. A second of trying to gain her balance proved useless, and Beth landed with a knee-crunching smash on the ice.

Pain.

Trying not to admit it to herself, Beth rolled over onto her butt, oblivious to the melting ice now soaking her jeans. Biting her lip to keep from crying, she gingerly rolled up the right leg of her jeans to examine the damage.

No blood. Didn't even feel like she had broken anything. Just a big, fat purple bruise spreading across her bony kneecap.

She could deal with that. Standing up and gently rolling the jeans back down, she carefully gathered the scattered contents of her backpack and plucked her apple from where it had landed in a snow bank. Limping, but otherwise uninjured, Beth started down the street again, this time much more slowly. So much for being on time…

By the time Beth made it to the red brick building of the school, she could see classes starting through the windows. Gritting her teeth in preparation for the reprimand she knew she would get from almost every member of the administration, she grimly hauled open the front door and limped her way into the office.

"Beth! There you are, dear." Beth bared her teeth in what she hoped would pass for a smile at the bubbly Mrs. Turner. "We were beginning to wonder whether you were coming back at all!" Mrs. Turner smiled as if she had just made a hilarious joke.

Beth bared her teeth again. "Slept in," she mumbled. Stupid Mrs. Turner and her perfect hair and her perfect life. Beth had sat through way too much of this woman's babbling about her perfect little angelic children to have any sort of patience with her. No mother was ever actually that happy all the time.

"Well, did you set your alarm?" She sounded like she was scolding America's favourite teenager.

Beth dropped the teeth-baring smile and simply glared at the woman. "I need my timetable," she ground out from between her clenched teeth. There was just something about this woman (and probably something to do with the fact that she was tired and her knee hurt and Ryan had thrown her out again last night for the third time that week and Ron had shown up and she still wasn't sure why she couldn't stop thinking about him) that was setting Beth on edge this morning. Usually she was polite, even friendly to the secretaries and her oh-so-chummy principal, but not today. Beth just wanted to go to class and then go to work and get today over with so that she could go home and see if Ron had written to her yet. Which of course he wouldn't have had time to do yet, but Beth could still hope.

"All right. Here you are, dear." Mrs. Turner handed over her schedule with an extra-big toothy grin, and Beth couldn't help but notice the lipstick stains on her teeth.

"Thanks," she muttered.

"Hopefully that alarm works a little better tomorrow morning!" the secretary sang at her. "I'm just going to go check and see if Mr. Adderson needs anything. Have a good day!" Beth gave her another grimace, and then limped her way into the hall, trying not to think about what exactly it was Mr. Adderson was going to need. It was common knowledge among the students that their principal was sleeping (if you could call it that) with both of his secretaries, who were both married women and knew about his activities with the other and just didn't seem to care. Beth had a lot of trouble respecting either of them.

Shaking her head slightly at the desperate woman behind her, Beth perused her timetable as she bit into her breakfast apple and made her way slowly down the hall. Biology first period, followed by Math and then English. Fantastic. She was slotted to go to Art for her last class of the day, but she was old enough now that they'd let her drop that class. She would be able to get an extra hour and a half in at the grocery mart, which would make both Cooper and her pocketbook very happy.

Maybe today wouldn't be that bad after all.

It took her mere minutes to convince Mrs. Turner to allow her to drop out of Art that afternoon, and it was no question as to why. The busty blonde secretary was flushed and her shirt rumpled, and Beth had to swallow hard to keep down the bile at the sight of her lipstick-smeared, bruised lips. Obviously Mr. Adderson had had a bit of a need for her this afternoon. You would think she would have cleaned up a bit before coming back to work, though.

Shaking her head again at the breathless woman behind her, Beth made her way out of the school into the bright afternoon sun. It always made her feel better to leave school, even when it was raining. Leaving meant that she got to spend the next six – and now eight – hours at the grocery mart, mindlessly stocking shelves and mopping floors. Cooper was nice, but the best part of working for him was that Beth had done it for so long now that she hardly needed to think to perform the tasks he gave her. She knew her way around the store like the back of her hand and so she could just let herself float through the evening without too much thought.

Cooper was helping an older lady load her groceries into the back of her car when Beth showed up, and he looked only slightly surprised to see her. Beth cut out of school early whenever she was having a particularly bad day, and she always ended up at one of two places. The first was Melinda's; the second was Cooper's. Beth imagined she would have been more than a little annoyed if one of her employees kept showing up hours early for work expecting to be paid, but Cooper never seemed the slightest bit upset about it. He usually just gave her a grim smile and asked if she wanted to talk about it (which she never did) and then handed her a mop and told her where to start. He let her take her anger out on the floor, which was actually very effective and Beth always left the store in a much better mood than she had shown up in.

"What's got you on edge today, then?" Cooper asked with a friendly wink as Beth came out of the bathroom wearing her bright red smock. He held the mop bucket in his hand, and Beth gave him the first real smile of the day.

"Nothing, actually," she said as she took it from him. "I took a free period in my schedule this year, and I'll be able to come at two instead of three-thirty for the rest of the semester."

Cooper's grin was real as he handed over his bucket, which was the thing Beth loved most about the middle-aged dark-haired man. He had taken over the store from his parents and entertained Beth with stories of the mischief he used to get up to when business got slow. "Sure you don't want to use the time to tackle some homework?" he asked her. Cooper had a very low opinion of homework, having never done any in his entire educational career.

Beth stuck her tongue out at him and then went to fill her mop bucket from the sink in the back. "Where do you want me to start?" she called over her shoulder as she cranked the hot tap on as far as it would go.

"Over by produce, I think," Cooper replied. "The grape ladies have particularly muddy boots today." The grape ladies were another of his jokes. He and his various employees checked the produce regularly for ripeness, but a there were always a few customers who felt that the grapes in each particular bag weren't good enough alone and needed to be resorted. They'd dig through the bags and take a sprig of the best grapes from each, leaving a mess of bruised grapes (which was the problem they were trying to avoid in the first place) in their wake. The grape ladies drove Cooper crazy. Beth grinned to herself as she lugged the now-full bucket of water and suds over to the sad bags of fruit, pausing to straighten a few before she left to fetch the mop from the storage cupboard.

Usually, when Beth mopped, she could manage to zone out to a state where it took a customer two tries to get her attention. Today, however, she simply could not get her over-excited mind to shut down. Finally, she allowed it to touch on the subject she had been ignoring all day: Ron.

Why had she kissed him? He probably thought she was a horrible flirt. She had a sudden vision of herself, ten years later, looking and acting exactly like Mrs. Turner. A flush rose in her cheeks and she instantly regretted her actions last night. She had probably scared him off now, and would receive no mysterious letter delivered by an owl named Pig. A smile crossed her face at that. He had been so embarrassed, his already cold-flushed cheeks burning red. No, the look on his face told her that he hadn't thought her a flirt. An irrepressible grin flared on her face as she thought about his. He had been so adorably shocked by her kiss.

A giggle escaped her lips, and she clapped her hand over her mouth and looked around quickly, instantly embarrassed. No one had heard her, though, and so she allowed herself a small smile and continued to mop away the grape ladies' muddy footprints, her thoughts full of red hair and strong arms and windblown freckles.


	6. Chapter 6

Ron glared darkly at the wind-whipped snowy darkness outside the train window. The weather had gotten progressively worse as the day went on, and their journey away from London seemed to be leading them further and further into the storm, matching Ron's mood exactly as his thoughts got darker and darker. He'd been on-edge all day and it was to a point now that Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Luna were now studiously ignoring him as they played a very loud game of Exploding Snap.

Luna smacked her hand down on the card pile and was rewarded with an explosive flurry of playing cards. One of the rogue pieces sliced against Ron's cheek, not drawing blood but leaving a stinging line. Ron's fingers traced the line and he felt the growing anger inside him reach a boiling point.

"Could you stop it?" he roared angrily, throwing the card roughly back towards his friends.

"Ron…" Hermione started gently while Luna and Neville gazed back at him in astonishment. Harry just looked peeved.

"Well, honestly," Ron growled, knowing he was being completely ridiculous but too upset to care. "You've been at it all bloody day."

"Do you want to join us now, then, Ron?" Luna asked gently, her wispy voice made even more so by her consoling tone. Ron glared balefully at her and then immediately regretted it. This wasn't Luna's fault.

"If you're going to be like this all semester I'm going to set Dobby on you," Harry muttered. Ron could just imagine what the bubbling elf would do when tasked with cheering him up. With a moan, Ron scrubbed his hands over his face, rumpling his hair. He finally met Harry's eyes, his insides churning with the despair building up inside him.

"I'm sorry, mate," he finally muttered.

"What's gotten into you?" Neville asked quietly. "Did something happen?" There were all staring at him now, the playing cards forgotten in a mess around the compartment. Ron found he had liked it better when they were ignoring him, and wished he would have kept his mouth shut.

Unable to answer Neville, he turned his attention away from his friends, digging roughly through his bag for a quill and parchment. He already missed Beth so much that it felt like a tangible weight in his chest, and it alarmed him a bit. He'd seen her three times, spent probably a collective ten hours in her presence, and already he was so hopelessly in love with her that it turned him into an unbearable grouch to leave her. Finally finding a quill that wasn't broken, Ron spread a crumpled piece of parchment out atop a textbook and dipped his quill into his ink.

Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Luna were still staring at him. "What?" he asked, and it came out as more of a growl than he intended it to. "Sorry," he muttered again, as they all looked quickly away from him.

"Eat something," Hermione said, tossing a last cauldron cake at him. "Maybe it'll help." Her voice softened at the end, and Ron looked up quickly to see that she was watching him with an expression on her face that was startlingly close to pity. He grunted at her, unsure what else to do, and turned his attention to his letter, and Beth.

_Dear Beth,_

_I hope this reaches you okay. Pig's not exactly the most reliable when it comes to first deliveries. He came back to me three times when I sent him to Harry at first (Harry's my friend – I dunno if you remember him from the bookshop or not. Scrawny bloke with a bunch of scruffy black hair and green eyes and specs…) Pig's getting better though, so I think he'll make it all right. _

_How did things work out with your stepdad? I'm really sorry I got him upset with you… I hope he wasn't too mad. _

_Things are freezing here. My school is in an old castle and there isn't any heating, so most if the winter we have to wear our scarves and hats to class with us. The Great Hall (that's where we eat) is always warm, though. The kitchen staff really outdid themselves for our start-of-term feast this time – there was so much food I'm amazed the tables could hold it all. Really, Beth, I wish you could've seen it. _

_I wish you could see it all. I love it at Hogwarts. The grounds are amazing – there's a forest and a giant lake and the groundskeeper has gardens that are bursting with pumpkins. What's your school like? You go to school in Ottery St. Catchpole, right? _

_My teachers are already piling the homework on us again. They must have realized that they're behind and are trying to jam everything in to get back on schedule before exams. I'm not so worried, though. Really it's my friend Hermione that's worried, but she takes classes a bit more seriously than I do. _

Ron blew out a frustrated breath of air and ran his hands through his already-tousled hair. The sun had set hours ago and he was now holed up in the Gryffindor common room, attempting once again to write to Beth. Setting down his quill, he stared at the fire and the many scattered pieces of parchment that he had thrown into it, trying to decide if this draft could be rescued, or whether writing to Beth really would be as impossible as he had originally thought. His writing was full of holes. Really, when he wasn't talking about magic, Ron found he didn't have much to say. He couldn't tell Beth about his classes, the way Professor Flitwick had induced a water fight in his classroom, teaching them to shoot streams of water from their wands, and then later how to siphon that water off their clothes. He could say nothing of Snape, for to explain Snape properly, one would have to explain about Harry and You-Know-Who. Beth would never know about exactly how giant the pumpkins bursting in Hagrid's garden really were, or how magical the return feast had been. She would never know about Quiddich. She would never –

"Hi, Ron." It was Lavender. "Have a nice holiday?" Ron felt his heart sink into his stomach. He had completely forgotten about Lavender over the holidays. They'd dated once or twice before the end of term; simple visits to Hogsmede and once a snowy walk around the grounds. There had also been that first significant make-out session after that Quiddich game…

"Uh, hey," Ron said, spinning quickly on his chair and casually flipping over his letter to Beth. Lavender had abandoned her robes for Muggle clothing consisting of a very tight pair of jeans and a low-cut shirt. Rather than arousal, as the outfit was obviously intended to entice, Ron felt pity. Lavender could find a decent guy, if only she would drop the ditzy bubbles act.

"Look," Lavender started, leaning over slightly on the back of Ron's chair. "I was wondering-"

"Ron!" Hermione cut her off, throwing herself into the overstuffed armchair beside Ron's.

"What do _you_ want?" Lavender all but growled, her tone now completely opposite to the one she had used on Ron. She fixed Hermione with a glare.

"You know," Hermione said casually, picking up Ron's letter and glancing down at it. "Being a bitch to Ron's friends probably isn't going to endear you to him much." Lavender blinked in surprise, but Ron suspected it was more because she didn't know what 'endear' meant, more than that she was actually shocked about what Hermione had said. At a loss, Lavender mumbled something about talking to Ron later and flounced off.

Ron let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. "Thanks," he muttered ruefully to Hermione, gently tugging his letter back out of her hands.

"You know…" Hermione said contemplatively, "the fastest way to get rid of her would be to tell her about Beth."

"What, tell her that I'm in love with a girl who I've met three times and who also happens to be a Muggle? And that she's bloody difficult to write to," Ron added as an afterthought, frustration creeping into his voice. He picked up his letter again and scowled at it.

"Let me have a look," Hermione said, reaching for the parchment in Ron's hands. Ron whipped it out of her reach, colour starting to creep up his neck.

"No!" he all but cried.

Hermione levelled him with a look, but when Ron did nothing but glare back stubbornly at her, she sighed in exasperation. "Why not?" she finally demanded.

"Because it's bloody personal, that's why!" Ron scowled at her as she made a move to grab the letter again. "I didn't demand you let me read your letters to Krummy, now did I?"

Hermione gave him the look again, only this time it was a shade darker. "I'm only trying to help, Ron. I happen to have a lot of experience writing to Muggles about Hogwarts, you know. All of my relatives apart from my parents know nothing about magic and yet are dying to know about school abroad."

Huh. Well, Ron hadn't thought about that.

"Promise not to laugh?" he asked begrudgingly. Hermione gave him a simple serious nod, and he reluctantly handed over the parchment. Hermione sat silently for a moment, her eyes quickly scanning the paper.

"Wow, Ron, I'm impressed," she said when she looked up at him again. "You actually did a good job of this." Ron narrowed his eyes at her but, sensing no sarcasm, gave her a weak smile.

"Thanks," he muttered. "It just feels so fake, you know? So…"

"Superficial?" Hermione supplied. Ron didn't quite know what that meant, but he decided if Hermione had suggested it then it probably fit the context perfectly.

"Yeah. I keep thinking about things I want to tell her, but I can't because then I'd have to explain so many other things about magic."

"I know what you mean," Hermione said with a tired smile. "But this is only your first letter, you know. You don't have to tell her everything. Why not send this off and she what she says. You can always just talk about whatever she writes you about if you don't have anything to say about Hogwarts at the moment."

"Thanks, Hermione," Ron said, accepting his letter and feeling loads better about it than he had when he had handed it off. Hermione gave him an affectionate pat on the head as she left, an annoying but familiar quirk of hers, and Ron bent over his letter to add a last few lines.

_Say hello to Melinda for me. Hope everything's good with you,_

_Ron_

That would have to do for now, as the common room was getting quite empty and quite dark, and he had Quiddich practice bright and early the next morning. Harry would kick his butt if he was sluggish at practice, best friends or not. Rolling up Beth's letter, he tucked it and his books inside his bag, screwed the lid on his ink, and headed up to his dormitory for bed.

He didn't notice the still figure sitting in the darkest corner of the room, hunched down deep in an overstuffed armchair. The figure waited until Ron's footsteps couldn't be heard on the spiral staircase anymore, and then darted forward, sweeping up one of the crumpled drafts Ron had aimed at the fire but had not quite reached its target.


	7. Chapter 7

_Dear Ron,_

_Hogwarts sounds incredible. I can't imagine going to school in a castle. But you must be freezing if the weather there is anything like what we've been having. Where exactly is your school? You never did tell me. Is it terribly far from Ottery? It must be if you only make it home for the holidays. I bet your folks must miss you a bunch. _

Beth sat back in her chair, blowing her bangs away from her face – she needed to find the scissors later and give them a trim – and glared down at the handwriting on her page. Her gaze flicked to Ron's letter, his spidery handwriting dotting across the thick paper in elegant-looking ink. She fingered the edge of his letter, her brow rumpled in confusion. It wasn't paper. It was something softer than that, and thicker. The roll she had snatched from the small ball of fur that was Ron's owl was small, but tightly bound with a short piece of twine. Her heart had leapt when she had awoken that morning to the small bird flitting impatiently outside her window. At first she had thought it was a sparrow, come back too early for spring, but when she had moved to watch it and it's flitting had increased in intensity until it was almost batting itself against her window in excitement, she had suddenly remember Ron's promise to write to her.

Beth hadn't necessarily forgotten about Ron's letter, but she hadn't been allowing herself much in the way of hope either. People always said they would write, but then life stepped in and distance made them forget the promise. A week had gone by with no news from Ron, and Beth had begun to console herself with the fact that she had met him at all. Nobody wrote letters anymore, anyway.

Nobody, it seemed, except Ron.

The owl had bounced around her room for a while once she tugged open the window, debated for a moment whether or not to leave it open and brave the cold, and decided to shut it eventually. She could see the small roll tied to the owl's leg, but it had been far too energetic for Beth to get much closer than a few feet, as it flitted from one spot to another, seeming to investigate her room. It hooted happily each time it landed, flipped aside her scarf as it alighted on the corner of her bed, running its beak through the pages of her textbooks when it hopped to the desk. Beth worried for a moment that the noise might wake Brian, but knew from experience that nothing would wake him until well after lunch.

Finally, the owl – Pig, was its name? – turned from its investigation of Beth's meagre supply of makeup, and flew directly at her face. Beth screeched and ducked, but the owl simply alighted on her shoulder, looking only slightly ruffled at her reception, and offered its leg. It was like a ball of energy, though, and seemed to vibrate with the effort to keep still long enough for Beth to untie the small roll of paper. It was the closest she had ever been to a bird in her life, and while she had been wary of it at first, the small talons digging lightly into her sweater for purchase felt oddly comforting.

Pig had taken off immediately once Beth had untied the letter, flitting around her hands and even landing once on her wrist to nose them apart and check between her fingers, almost causing her to drop the tightly bound roll of paper.

"What are you looking for?" she murmured, stopping in her efforts to stroke the bird's head. It cooed, its eyes closing in delight. Beth laughed and gave Pig one last scratch before gently setting him down on her desk and sliding into the chair to read Ron's note. The cold that had come in with the bird when she opened the window was biting, though, and Beth could feel an ache seeping into the bruise from her fall on that first day of school. She leaned back to snatch a spare blanket from the foot of her bed, wrapping it firmly around herself. Pig bounced up immediately, snuggling himself into the knitting on her shoulder, and then gazing down expectedly, as though he was waiting for Beth to read. She laughed quietly, but did as he wanted, giving up on untying Ron's tight knot and instead sliding the whole string from around the bundle.

His note was short, but remarkably sweet, and Beth found herself imagining the self-conscious half smile he seemed to take on when he spoke about himself. Their conversations had all been relatively short, but Beth was shocked with how comfortable she had become with him. She had met him three times, and already he knew about Brian, and Melinda, and even her job at Cooper's. This red-haired stranger had come into her life so unexpectedly, but Beth was drawn to him in a way she was finding hard to reconcile with herself. She wasn't close with anyone, save for Melinda and Cooper. What was it about Ron that made him so different?

Beth glanced sideways at the small owl – he wasn't much bigger than the palm of her hand – curled up on her shoulder, now almost asleep, and smiled. Ron was unlike anyone she had ever met. And it had nothing to do with his startling flame-red hair, or the electricity behind his eyes. It was the aura he gave off, the one Beth had felt since she first laid eyes on him in the second-hand bookshop. Ron Weasley was the first person she had met around whom she felt she didn't have to be careful. With Melinda, she was careful not to let Brian's storm clouds enter her eyes, and with Cooper she stayed sarcastically indifferent as often as she could. She found it easier to simply mimic the persona of the person she was with than let them see the nuances of her own. But with Ron… the way he looked at her, it was like she could say anything, do anything, _be _anything, and his blue eyes would still watch her with that same look of utter fascination. She had no proof, no reason to believe in him the way she did, but Beth knew that Ron would never leave. She saw it in the curve of his shoulders, the way his hands wrapped around his mug of tea. It was in his smile when he first saw her, and the look in his eyes when he had left her on Brian's porch.

Ron exuded a sense of unwaveringness that caused Beth's heart to beat just a little faster. And that frightened her a little more than it should have. But it also excited her, and for once she was determined not to deny herself a good thing. She had another year of high school left after this, and once she was eighteen she would be able to leave Brian and Ottery St. Catchpole and everything that had been the dark hole of her childhood behind.

But not Ron. Ron, she would hold on to as long as she could.

She swiped the bangs distractedly from her eyes again, and focussed on the words on her page. Her thin loose-leaf paper and ball-point scribbles looked so unsophisticated beside the elegance of Ron's curled paper and soft script. But he had written her, and the butterflies in her stomach would not let up, and it looked like Pig wasn't leaving until she wrote something for him to take back to Ron. So Beth ran her fingers through her hair and gave the owl on her shoulder a quick pet – he let out a drowsy coo – and set herself to writing again.

_Things with me have been fine. My stepfather and I mostly avoid each other anyway. I've had tea with Mellie a couple times when I'm not too bogged down with homework. I've got Bio and Math this semester, which are definitely not two of my favourites. My Bio teacher's a bit of a bore so I've got to do a lot of reading if I expect to pass. What are your classes like? _

_Cooper had a bit of a row with one of the customers the other day (he's the bloke who owns the grocery mart where I work, remember?). It was over him not stocking organic bananas or something, I'm not totally sure. But anyways it ended in the customer storming out and knocking down a whole stack of pickles on her way. Glass and pickles were everywhere, it was an awful mess to mop up. I'm pretty sure my smock is going to smell like pickles for the next month. _

_Stay warm,_

_Beth_

Her nose scrunched a bit in embarrassment as she read over what she had written. First complaining about classes, and then about the pickles… and it was a bit of a stupid, trifling thing to write someone about, anyway, wasn't it? But a surge of recklessness overtook her and she folded the letter anyway. She had nothing of importance to write Ron about, so he could hear about the nuances of her fairly boring life.

Rummaging in her desk drawers for a piece of string, Beth wrapped it tightly around the little parcel she had made out of her sheet of paper, folded as small as she could get it. Pig was dead asleep on her shoulder, though, so she left the note on her desk and crossed to her bed to resume her book, careful not to wake the warm ball of feathers curled at her neck.

"Hey Ron," Seamus called down the table. "Isn't that Pig?" Ron looked up from his eggs to see his little speck of an owl bobbing and flitting between the other owls soaring down among the other breakfasting students in the Great Hall.

"Yeah, it is. Thanks, mate!" Ron called back. "C'mere, you stupid runt," he addressed the owl in as much as an undertone as he could, not wanting to attract the attention of too many other Gryffindors. Pig seemed to hear him anyway, and gave a screech of delight and dive-bombed towards his head as though he was using the orange of his hair as a landing target. Ron ducked and snatched the owl out of the air before it could smash into him, holding it firmly with one hand while he tugged the small white square from its leg. Pig cooed happily at Ron as he released him to nibble on his toast while his suddenly-wooden fingers turned over the small square.

Beth.

Hermione was watching him carefully, though, so Ron slipped the square unread into the pocket of his robes, wanting to find somewhere with a little more privacy before he unfolded it. He met his friend's eyes, though, and she gave him a conspiratorial smile before turning back to her cereal. Harry chose that moment to slide onto the bench beside him.

"What are you two on about now?" he asked, piling a pair of sausages and some eggs onto his plate.

"Ron got a letter," Hermione said, her nonchalance dancing along the edge of teasing. Ron felt his face flame immediately and aimed a kick at her under the table. He missed, though, and Harry snickered around his mouthful of food.

"Your village lover?" he asked once he had swallowed.

"I'm going to kill the twins, I swear," Ron muttered, but refused to say anything more. Harry and Hermione poked at him for a moment longer, but eventually dropped it.

"So have you seen Malfoy lately, then?" Harry asked, suddenly serious as he leaned forward over the table. Ron and Hermione both instinctively leaned closer as well.

"Oh, Harry, you're not still on about this, are you?"

"Come on, Hermione. You heard him at the Christmas party." Harry was insistent.

"Which Christmas party is this?" Ron asked, abandoning the rest of his toast to Pig, who took off for the Owlery in delight.

"The Slug Club one, remember?" Harry said carefully.

"Ah, right." Ron hadn't exactly been the best of sports about that one. And then the whole thing with Lavender right before break…

"Yeah, but remember, we told you Malfoy got dragged in by Filch? Claimed he was gate-crashing, but I got the feeling he couldn't have cared less about the Slug Club party. You should have seen the way he looked at Slughorn. And then Snape cornered him after, and –"

"Harry, we've been over this," Hermione interrupted him, a little crossly.

"Yeah but Hermione, have you seen the pair of them this week? Real jumpy, like they don't want to look at each other. Watch them in Potions this afternoon, you'll see what I mean."

"All right," Hermione conceded. "But I still think you're reading too much into it. Dumbledore wouldn't let either of them stay in the castle if he didn't trust them."

"Dumbledore has made mistakes before, Hermione," Harry insisted, but she just shook her head.

"I told Lupin and your dad about it at the Burrow, Ron," Harry said, abandoning Hermione and rounding instead on his ginger-haired friend. Ron, not wanting to get in the middle of one of their rows, though, merely grunted. "Lupin told me that this werewolf named Fenrir Greyback has made appearances again."

"Oh, I remember that name…" Hermione joined the conversation again and Harry turned back to address her instead, throwing Ron a momentary look of confusion. Usually Ron would talk conspiracy and hate on Malfoy with him for hours, but today he just didn't have the heart.

"Greyback?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, don't you remember? Malfoy threatened Borgin with him when we followed him at Diagon Alley."

"See!" Harry crowed, and then quickly lowered his voice as Dean glanced their way from his conversation with Seamus. "Lupin told me the Death Eaters have Greyback doing their dirty work form them. If Malfoy's throwing his name around, then that means he _must_ be one of them." Hermione was already shaking her head before he was finished.

"Malfoy was probably just trying to make himself look good, Harry. And he expected Borgin to believe the threat because his dad is a Death Eater."

"Malfoy's dad? C'mon Hermione, he's got nothing anymore. Malfoy had to have had some other kind of influence over Greyback, otherwise Borgin wouldn't have even blinked."

Ron let them argue, talking themselves around in circles as Harry suggested new proof for Malfoy's induction into the Death Eaters and Hermione shut him down at each point. Eventually, she must have tired of it, though, because she stood abruptly, causing Ron to start out of the daze he had settled into. The note in his pocket seemed to be burning through the material of his robe until he could feel each corner and fold pressed against his leg.

"I'm going to be late for Ancient Ruins if I don't hurry," she said apologetically. "Don't go spreading this around, Harry. If Malfoy finds out you've been poking at him he won't take kindly to it." Harry didn't argue with her as she gathered her books, choosing as the boys usually did to leave her advice go unquestioned, whether they planned to follow it or not.

"I'll see you all in Transfiguration, then" she said, and hurried off to Ancient Ruins. Harry rounded on Ron.

"What's gotten into you?" he demanded, giving Ron a sharp jab in the side.

"Wha?"

"What are you on about?" Harry repeated.

"Nothing," Ron muttered, shovelling the last of his eggs into his mouth and unfolding his long form from the Gryffindor bench. "C'mon, Harry, or we're going to be late, too." Harry, true to form, fell silent and let Ron be as they wove through the sea of black robes on their way to Charms.


End file.
